


from will's bridge

by redreys



Series: Original Characters' Statements [2]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Gen, The Lonely Fear Entity (The Magnus Archives), and the importance of connection, this is all about lost chances i guess, which is surprising given that a lonely avatar is speaking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-02
Updated: 2021-01-02
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:00:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28490535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redreys/pseuds/redreys
Summary: This statement is my chance, dear reader. It is the one place where I can be heard.It’s still no more than a small mercy, that hurts me and feeds in return because I know it to be a trap, but Ihadto take it, and beg the Eye to keep its promise. Ask it to be my theatre, the empty stage where I allow myself to play my story; the odd frame that makes it easier for me to buy into a lie.The main gift, though, is not the Eye, or the Archivist. It is you.
Series: Original Characters' Statements [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2087139
Comments: 6
Kudos: 6





	from will's bridge

**Author's Note:**

> CW: isolation and unreality 
> 
> i wrote this piece as a statement for the [avatar of fear zine](https://avataroffearzine.tumblr.com/post/639155338580525056/hey-everyone-the-avatar-of-fear-a-magnus-archive), which you should absolutely check out!! the other statements [and art!] are absolutely Wonderful
> 
> (ps: on the zine itself the pages have some effects that make them look stained/used, like a written letter would + title and last line are written in calligraphy, but I couldn't do that on ao3)

may 2016

from will's bridge

This is the first letter I’ve written in quite a long while.

I don’t really know how to begin, but I can imagine what she’d have me start with if I was writing within her walls. Good stories are about looking at a complex life with a very specific, very minute kind of focus, and I think that is what she needs, in return for the attention I am seeking—what I need to give her, so that she will listen to me. A good story about fear.

As a disclaimer, I am not going to write a linear tale, and this isn’t the retelling of a specific event, so don’t bother looking for fear in little tied-up episodes of terror.

This is more of… a crumble. A grain of dust taken directly from my heart. A contextless piece of dialogue, sent to you for the sake of it. It is a confession but I have nothing to confess, I just want to prove to myself that my voice can still be heard.

I hope you take my words from what they are. I am giving you my mind, and I want you to see it. I want _her_ to realise that it is, at all times, quietly soaked in terror. She can take her fear from there, whenever and however she wants.

I have repeated a version of this monologue about a thousand times in the quiet of my thoughts, but it’s just not every day that I get to tell it to a stranger. I didn't have much of a choice, and I could not find anyone new to open up to, until now. Until her, and until you.

Don’t get me wrong—I don’t have a high opinion of myself, nor do I find my life particularly meaningful, but I take pleasure in curating my narrative voice. I like taking care of it, sharpening it into something recognizable, something genuine and mine.

That’s why I am writing from here, where the push of her Institute is weakest, and I am free to pick the words of my own volition.

My name is Will. If you go by Smirke’s terminology, I am a part of the Lonely. I wouldn’t say that I serve it, like you would with a god, but fear has rooted itself in my bones for decades now, and I wore it like a glove till it became my skin.

Is that enough to make me an avatar? Do I fit her definition?

I hear avatars are elected from the few, called by the powers, but I never felt chosen. I felt like I was eaten and somehow survived the process.

I am aware that none of this matters to the Archivist. She probably knew who I was before I could even start explaining myself. 

Still, I wanted to write it down. Say ‘Lonely’ as soon as possible. Make sure _you_ , at least, would hear this directly from me, no euphemisms or encrypted codes.

I just need things to be secure, you see. Locked under the weight of the most mundane of actions, even if by now I can use more powerful means to predict the future.

Old habits tend to get stuck in my fingers when I am doing something that matters, and this letter is too stupidly important for me to let go of my anxiety. I can’t have you misunderstand me. I _have_ to write ‘Lonely’ in plain letters, and I _know_ that I will reread the back of the envelope several times just to make sure that I haven’t spelt “Magnus Institute” incorrectly. Jeopardised this entire operation because of a missing ‘n’.

You can’t see this (though, maybe, _she_ can), but my body trembles every time I lift up the pen to think of what to say next.

Might just be because I am outside and it’s dark and cold, but if so, that would be the first time the weather has had any impact on me in about nineteen years. It’s more likely that I am just tense.

It feels very odd, but I am still trying to get used to my writing, for all that it is and all that it isn’t. Ease myself into the words, and learn how to wander through the fog.

I am trying to picture the Archivist in the darkness of the Institute, reading these exact sentences aloud, or maybe just letting them hover quietly in her head. I am trying to digest my own desires, to be okay with this letter being received and not just sent.

I am trying, truly. It’s just harder than I expected.

This is going to sound ironic, given who we are, but I hate not being able to stare at you. When I want to connect with people, usually I require a point to fixate on. Something like an uncharacteristic detail, desperately out of place but still true. A vulnerable, harmless secret that I can anchor myself to, a well to sink in. 

Obviously, there’s no way I can operate on that principle now—you aren’t real, the Archivist isn’t here—and I miss it.

What do you think you would look like, if I could see you? If I had the chance to materialise a soul I cannot hurt, borrow a stranger's face from a dream?

I had a friend in elementary school who hated his own smile. It was painful for him, and it hurt me to see it affect him. It was like his joy always came at a price, and though he was willing to pay it, it was never simple.

Sometimes, happiness was enough to either uncover his beauty or declass ugliness to a thing forgotten, unimportant, and I _loved_ seeing that happen. Read the change in the way he lowered his hands from his face, so he could use them to hold mine.

I think it takes a lot to love from your own body. To go through your voice when you say _I care about you_ , to let joy escape your lips when you laugh. To use your arms when you hug a friend, to trust them with your skin once you are pressed against them.

I don’t know much about Gertrude Robinson, but what I do know is enough to convince me that she isn’t made to embody change. Isn’t trying to love from behind her lungs, isn’t holding her breath to make space for my words.

I can’t blame her—I don’t know if I fit the role, either—but I want nothing to do with her. Which is why, despite being my only real reader, she is a ‘her’, and not a ‘you’.

I still haven’t explained that one fully, though, have I? Haven’t told you yet, why it is that this letter is split in intent. Why it so desperately needs to exist at all.

I’ll put it like this first: if I could see _you_ , as my chosen addressee you’d have no choice but to be imperfect, and still try to love regardless, because good humans don’t come in any other way. But if you were like that and you were real, you would be one of those people I stare at.

If you approached me, my body—my body _mine_ , my body _foreign machine_ , _uncontrolled beast,_ _language familiar by sounds but notmeanings_ —would push you away without touching you. You would get lost, disoriented. Fail to notice that your child is crossing the road without looking, that you are losing the most important chance in your life, that you are saying no to the wrong question.

It would be like that old nightmare. You are standing in a living room as the house shakes, unable to move for reasons you cannot understand, and the worst part is not that you are not going to survive, but that you are the only one stuck. The only one left standing without a voice to scream.

And that, my friend. That wouldn’t be good.

So—why am I writing a letter? A ramble with no beginning and no end, written to ease myself into inevitable discomfort?

Because of this idea I just spent a while talking about. Because I may no longer experience any new real connection, _ever again._

Because utter loneliness is supposed to be unthinkable, and the knowledge that it isn’t haunts me to this day. The pain of surviving it comes back to me, like a recurring dream, pleasing my fear and hurting me beyond repair, and this time, when it finally showed up, sitting in it and closing the door wasn’t enough to placate it.

I wanted to be trusted by a stranger so badly I thought I would explode. It was unbearable. I even tried walking right into a crowd and forcing myself to repress mypowers, but nothing worked. Actually, it nearly killed me.

And then, one evening, out of the blue, it hit me.

The Eye. _The Archivist’s Eye._ It can listen. Maybe not out of compassion or gentleness, but it still can.

This statement is my chance, dear reader. It is the one place where I can be heard.It’s still no more than a small mercy, that hurts me and feeds in return because I know it to be a trap, but I _had_ to take it, and beg the Eye to keep its promise. Ask it to be my theatre, the empty stage where I allow myself to play my story; the odd frame that makes it easier for me to buy into a lie.

The main gift, though, is not the Eye, or the Archivist. It is you.

_You_ imaginary reader, third observer who isn’t there, philosophical addressee and dearest companion. _You_ are my connection, and I can’t thank you enough for that.

When I put this letter into the mailbox, imagining your face at the end of the line, even though I know you won’t be there, you are going to live in my hands. You will breathe in the smile I’ll pull as I walk back to my house, and it will be beautiful. It will all feel so lonely and so sweet, and the shadow of your presence will comfort me. Deep down, where the lies work best, I will love you then just as I love you now.

I am sitting on a bridge as I write this, and I think I can feel it—my own longing stretching like a tightrope, above the river, angled in a specific direction so I can believe in it, but lost into the dark distance so that I may never witness its fall. So that I may not cry once it gets to her and you don’t send anything back.

It sounds counterintuitive, but when I think of my ‘powers’ and how they work, I think of bridges. The tightrope is a variation of them, thin because you are far away.

I feel like I should mention that you weren’t supposed to take the role of a victim in my head. Not even in metaphors. I wanted no bridges and no tightrope, just a feeble line between here and nowhere. I thought I was going to make it, too, free us of the usual dynamic, but as I kept writing I realised that the intent behind my raised hand has stopped mattering to me. Be it punch or be it caress, I see it all in the same way.

When I close my eyes, I can’t help but imagine myself walking all the way into your skin, and when the paradox breaks and time stops, I see the bricks falling into the water. Then it’s over, and you look around and wonder how anyone ever got close enough to touch you.

I don’t know if that bothers you, but I don’t like having these thoughts here. You know, this place is special. It’s a bridge that won’t fall, even when _I_ stand on it.

I mostly come here at night, on work-days, when I know nobody is looking. Some lost soul still walks by sometimes, but I can see them before they get too close, push them away gently and in silence.

There’s no version of this story where people notice _me_ , but it’s quite hard for me to miss _them_ , and, again—you don’t always need to know there’s a ghost to feel haunted.

I have accepted the hurt I inflict on others, but I refuse to be a monster here. This bridge is sacred, and it is _good_ , and it is mine.

I suppose I could tell you more about what it looks like and where it is, but I don’t know if I should. Maybe I just want you to think it’s pretty, and I’m afraid I would ruin it with actual descriptions. I don’t know.

Does it mean anything to you, that when I am here, I feel like praying? I can never bring myself to look up and ask, and I don’t have a god to believe in, but— _when I am here_ , I like the wind. _When I am here_ , I like the sky. When I sit in front of the lovelocks, left hanging pretty much everywhere on the bridge, I read out loud the names people have left onto the metal hearts, and, for once, I call them meaningful.

There’s a friend of mine (my _best_ friend, and the only one I have, the only other person I can write confessions to) who keeps telling me that one day she is going to paint this scene—me and the bridge, coexisting in harmony even if it hurts—just so I can stare at it when I am truly alone.

Each time, I tell her: there’s no way that can work. I would lose it, rip it, damage it, and even if I managed to keep it intact, eventually I would leave it somewhere just so I can miss it. She claims that she would make sure to build it solid, paint it backwards into me, saw it into my mind till it sticks, but, in that case, I fear that it would lose its purpose.

What’s the value of something you can’t break? What’s it to you, if it isn’t vulnerable?

My friend—her name is Jay—gets mad when I put it in those terms. _Well, idiot,_ she tells me, _the point is that I went through the effort of making it like that. It_ is _vulnerable, whatever the fuck that means to you, because_ I _made it. Authorship matters, you know._

I wouldn’t be writing this letter if it weren’t for her, so I guess that authorship does matter. She was the one to tell me about the entities, about the Archivist, and perhaps that’s the only reason why I never doubted any of it.

Still, though. I haven’t let her paint me yet.

Jay is from the Web, and technically she _could_ find a way to convince me, but she wouldn’t do that, not to me. That’s our unspoken promise.

We work together because we cancel each other out.

Whenever I am with her, I still can _feel_ the Lonely pushing against her margins, tainting the air with its invisible claws, separating and dispersing and quieting down voices, but my powers never get far enough to hurt. Her cobweb is too intricate to let me through, and not so intricate that I get caught in her traps.

It isn’t always comfortable, and my body doesn’t like not being alone for too long, but—well. I think you can see by now how eager I am to connect in a way that doesn’t hurt. I wouldn’t be willing to let go of her in a thousand years.

If you were my friend, I think you’d want to know that she exists. Despite all evidence, I am not entirely alone.

The Archivist isn’t my friend, though, so maybe it’d be more accurate to say that I am forcing her to sit through my affection. Is that cheating? Am I getting too far away from fear?

I mean—at best, I hear from Jay once or twice a year, as I have to physically train myself to accept closeness; we both play an instrument (that’s where I met her, actually; it was an afterschool thing when we were barely ten) and when we play it together, the music is… _supernatural_ in nature, powerful and profound and so sharp it scares me; when I hug her, I feel myself sinking into my mind, retracting, almost repulsed, and I have to exist in spite of it, go beyond my nature to meet her in the middle.

Is that love, or is that fear? Can you even pick and choose?

Sometimes, it feels as though I spread fear around like a poet would with words. Maybe I am just an artist playing with fire, making the most out of my tragedy. Maybe, you can’t take a picture of me only because I willed myself into escaping memories, all in an effort to impersonate a ghost that I can never be.

Does that make me less real? Less authentic?

I really don’t know. It’s not like I am going to be judged for this anyway. It’s not like it doesn’t hurt like _hell_. It’s not as if I wouldn’t give it away right this instant, if I knew how to stop wanting it.

Would it help you understand, telling you how this began? Explaining to you how I got my mark?

I have been sitting on that question since I started writing, and I still don’t know what I am supposed to do.

People will tell you that stories don’t make sense if you skip the intro, but that’s not true. Stories make sense however people write them, it just depends on structure, focus. Value.

The way I was marked was easy. It happened seamlessly. I think that is what I want you to know. I had the potential tools to change things before the domino effect could be set off, and I wasn’t fast enough. I had the chance to look harder for something that would anchor me to the earth, to people, to my relationships, to myself, and I didn’t take it.

In a kinder life, the delay wouldn’t have been a catastrophe. I genuinely thought I would have more time to rebuild myself, and it’s not my fault that my guess wasn’t accurate.

There’s a version of Will that was quicker with fixing what had gone rotten, and now has partners to share their life with, a crappy apartment with pictures on the wall, an odd friend group and movie nights on Tuesday.

I am not that person. I will never be that person. And still, I refuse to resent myself for sitting on the floor for just a little bit too long. 

People should have the freedom to fail without losing their entire life in one go. It’s wrong that I wasn’t allowed that.

‘Wrong’ doesn’t mean much in my case, I know. There’s no one I can complain to. No supernatural council I can shout at—this is just the way things are.

I like saying it, though. The freedom that comes from declaring it without shame. ‘What happened to me is wrong. No matter how much I failed, it is wrong.’

Even if I could, I think I truly would not be interested in finding out who or what the entities are, where they came from and when. It doesn’t matter, why they picked me and not my cousin or my middle-school bully or someone I was almost friends with at my first job.

The fact that I can’t point my finger and blame doesn’t say anything about my wound. It is not proof that I have been spared.

I am no longer angry about this, by the way. I am not sad or scared. I just don’t want to lie.

Odd to say, but whenever I am genuine with myself, I feel worthy, and this confession _has_ to be worth it. That’s what you get of me: occasional truths, struggle; sometimes fear, sometimes love. Not sure it’s a good deal, but this letter isn’t going to last much longer. You can let go of me when it’s over.

I was thinking before that fear doesn’t feel loud to me. It isn’t the jumpscare in a movie, the scream in an empty room, the gory details of a science story. Fear is sadness. It is terrifying because I accept it. It stops me dead in my tracks, and I stare at it as if I could study it. As if I could get it. I understand danger and I want to survive, but, ultimately, if it is freeze flee or fight, I freeze. I freeze till everyone else has escaped and I am alone, with no way back to life.

If I were to give you a full story of my mark, perhaps you wouldn’t find it exciting.

I don’t have good action-based memories from the time of my becoming, but some things I saw in my stillness stuck with me. If you’ll allow me, as a parting gift, I think I want to share them with you.

They don’t work as life-changing discoveries or fit-all solutions, so don’t expect too much, but there’s a chance you’ll enjoy them anyway. After all, that’s the kind of stuff you should include in confessions, right? Small treasures. Pictures you would use to describe your favourite feeling. Details that matter to you.

If it really does mean anything at all, those are moments when I almost felt calm. Alone, but not hopeless. Tired, but still standing.

I chose three of them, because I couldn’t list them all, and I chose them with you in mind.

So, just—hope I picked well. These are for you.

First:

On the third of August, from when I was six to when I was seventeen, I would make my grandmother a cake. Five years after moving away from my childhood home, on the day before her birthday, I was lying wide awake at three am in my bed, clutching my discoloured bed covers, thinking: _I should get up and bake grandma her present._ I had no chocolate and only two eggs, so I got out of my apartment to buy what I needed in one of those shops that are always open.

That decision ruined my life, but I am glad I was thinking about someone I loved.

Second:

I am staring at a kid in one of those shops that are always open, except this one, when I go there at night, eats me whole and leaves me wandering alone in empty aisles for hours, days, months, and only lets me go when it can tell I have given up on moving.

The kid is looking for a specific chocolate bar. They can’t find it, except for when they do and their eyes slide off of it because _I_ noticed it, too. Because some loathed part of me wants them to miss it.

Their dad says: _hey,_ _did you get your sweet?_

Kid says: _no. I think there isn’t any left._

Dad says: _it’s okay. We’ll find it tomorrow._

Last:

I am sitting on a bench and I am lost into a woman’s hands. I am lost into the way she clutches her phone, trying to call her best friend so she can tell him she cares about him, still. I am lost into her skin when she wipes away her tears, and I am slowing down her fingertips, so she can’t touch the button, can’t make the call. Can’t see the numbers from behind all that desperate crying.

A girl grabs my arm. _Will?_ she asks. _What the fuck are you doing?_

I haven’t seen Jay in more than a decade, but I recognise her immediately. I stop looking at the woman so I can look at her.

When Jay stops talking, her words are still spinning in my head— _lonely_ and _web_ and _I have missed you_ all tangled in a cloud of dust and relief. In the silence, I look back up, and notice that the woman I was staring at isn’t crying anymore. She is speaking on the phone, and smiling.

It’s almost five a.m. right now. I can’t see the stars from here—the city-air and the clouds cover them up—but it comforts me to know they are up there.

I have used a lot of metaphors to talk about my powers, but I have one left that I think you’ll like. Breaking apart chances feels like dismantling constellations. I am always at sea, sitting on the deck of a sailor’s ship like a ghost. The sailor is crying, surrounded by water, and they want to come back home. They look up, and the Big Dipper is scattered across the sky. Nothing is there to point to Polaris.

I don’t know if there’s any value in trying to find meaning in my overall existence, but what I am trying to say is that the stars aren’t any less beautiful because I isolate them. Keep them. Keep the stars. Keep these odd, shy neighbours, so far apart the distance between them is unthinkable, and be glad you were given the chance to see them coexist.

Maybe, someday, when I am not looking, they will find new partners. Hold out their hands to other lights. Build new constellations, and give themselves new names.

I have sent quite a lot of useless letters in my lifetime. Instruction guides on how to fix what I had broken that never got to the person who was meant to read them, love poems slipped under strangers' doors, all unread and discarded without a second look. Doodles and songs spray-painted onto walls with water-resistant colours, washed out as soon as it rained. 

This letter might be useless, too.

My body enjoys the loss of it, the Loneliness that comes with being seen by the Eye, digested but never understood, and my heart is content, for now. It likes that _you_ are here.

Neither of those things will last forever, though. I am not sure what I’ll come up with to keep myself from spiralling even further into fear, and I don’t know if I have any other aces up my sleeve.

What does ‘useless’ mean to you? Is a thing useless, because it only helps for a little while?

I am running out of words, and it won’t be too long before the sun comes up, so I think I’ll leave that question open. You choose whether to give up on the impermanent. Personally, it is all I have. 

And—friend? If you never hear from me again: good luck. Wish on shooting stars, and don’t be too sad to see them falling.

Thank you for listening to me, and for almost making my monologue a conversation.

You were the perfect gift.

With love, 

Will

**Author's Note:**

> hope you liked this! comments are always appreciated, and you can find me on tumblr as [mxrspider](https://mxrspider.tumblr.com/) 🌻 
> 
> (+ my entire ao3 profile should have a "thank you remus" disclaimer on top of it, but thank you remus for constantly letting me infodump about my original characters and encourage me to write) (+ thank you to the other writers of the zine for helping me with this! this statement wouldn't be what it is without them. their pieces are absolutely beautiful and I encourage you to read those, too)
> 
> [oh, and, btw! if anyone is interested, my character (and their friend, jay) are going to be a part of my main fic, [Night Before The End Of The World](https:https://archiveofourown.org/works/27067717/chapters/66088813), too]


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